In Focus

In Focus

By Heather Ann Martinez

It was midday. Sunday. Day 106 of isolation. Forced to stay inside, away from everything and everyone I love. I became the recipient of an unwanted gift called time. I preferred to be at my job in sales and marketing to camping out in the living room eating chocolate streusel coffeecake looking at hourly news reports. I promised to be productive with this ‘time away.” Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Who could that be? I wasn’t expecting anyone. I was still in my pajamas with curly undone bangs bouncing over my eyes. I was in no way ready to receive any guests. I crept up to the front door. I didn’t hear anything. I slowly opened the door and noticed a brown box sitting in the middle of my welcome mat. I looked around, took the box and closed the door as quickly as possible.

The box was not mailed to me. There was a handwritten note on top that said Open Me and it was signed your neighbor in 102. I didn’t recall meeting my neighbor next door in 102. When I was working, I was always running late. Grabbed my coffee, car keys, brief case and purse. I rarely ever spoke to my neighbors or saw them. We weren’t close. I expected that all of them were busy working professionals too. The funny thing about the note was the handwriting looked familiar. I picked up the box. It wasn’t ticking. It felt somewhat heavy for being a little bigger than a shoebox. I set it on the dining room table and opened it.

At least forty all too familiar photographs and a Canon A-1 with the first ever microcomputer from 1978 sat in the box. The photographs I had taken from all over Europe. I knew my neighbor in 102 had to be my ex Sebastian. I sifted through the photographs and picked up the camera. It was like seeing an old friend I was so rarely without before I had my current position. I gave up photography when Sebastian and I parted ways three years ago. What was he doing here? He said he would never come back to the United States. He always said there was always another city, another adventure around the corner. He wasn’t content with drinking a glass of wine from Sicily. He had to go visit the winery and meet the family who owned the vineyard the grapes came from. We lived like nomads for more than five years with nothing more than a couple of duffle bags and my trusted Canon hanging around my neck. We were happy until the day I found out I was pregnant.

When I told him, Sebastian left our rented loft in Paris for two days. When he returned, he told me he was going to Egypt. He was going to work for a touring agency for the next three months and take visitors to the pyramids and show them all of the hidden treasures we found there years earlier. He said he didn’t know where he was going after that, but he said he wasn’t going to stop discovering the world to have a family. With that, he left. I left Paris and went back to the United States. I had a baby girl nine months later and gave her up for an open adoption. I came here to Colorado Springs because my daughter, now four, lived up the street with her adoptive parents. I have play dates with her every other Thursday. I attend all of her pre-school functions. I buy clothes for her and sometimes brush her hair.

The light on the balcony next door turned on and off repeatedly. I rushed immediately to tell Sebastian to turn off the light. It would disturb our neighbors since it was still early. I forgot I was in my pajamas.

“Please turn off the light!” I whispered and I quickly folded my arms over my chest realizing I had not changed clothes.

“Well, I finally got your attention.” He said. He smiled.

“Yes, you have my attention. Thank you for returning my camera.” I said trying not to say everything I wanted to in one outburst. “How did you find me?”

“Come on Chavonne. Did you really think I’d lose track of you after? Well, after you told me you were pregnant. I admit I freaked out. I wasn’t ready to be a father. That was not in my card deck. I didn’t think being a mother was in your card deck either.” He leaned over his balcony railing and looked out at the pond and mountains in the distance.

“You’re right. We weren’t meant to be parents. You definitely had your priorities. You couldn’t picture us photographing the world with a kid in tow! Of course, you would never stop...”

“Never stop, what? Never stop traveling. Never stop meeting new people and seeing so many awesome things.”

“You would never stop to meet your own daughter.” I blurted out holding tears back.

“We have a daughter.” He covered his mouth with his hand still holding on to the railing with his other hand. “Where is she? Can I see her?”

I grabbed my railing, facing him. I needed life support. I explained that I gave her up. I signed her away before she was born with the stipulation that I could be in her life. Tears started falling down my face. He tried to grab my hand. I pushed it away. I went inside and brought back a photograph of our child.

“What is her name?” He asked as tears started falling down his cheeks. He said she has my eyes and his grandfather’s dimples.

“They named her Daisy.” I told him. I couldn’t take stop staring at his fingers caressing her photograph. 

“What did you name her? What do you call our daughter in your heart?” He asked.

I rubbed my nose. I could not hold back any tears.

“I named her Ruby.”

“Ruby, that’s a good name. I like that.”

We talked every morning for the next 100 days of quarantine keeping ourselves six feet apart. He told me he thought life without me and without the responsibility of having a child would be easier. He found that over time he was wrong. He had dreams of me being pregnant. He envisioned me pushing a stroller and picking up toys from a living room floor. He saw the articles I wrote for travel magazines, for the company that I work for now. He said nothing in life made sense to him without me in it. I put everything in focus.

“Move your head a little more to the right. There’s a deer behind you.” I said motioning with my hand.

“Like that.”

I started taking photographs again of our backyard wonders, the mountains in the distance, of Sebastian. Sebastian made many apologies for leaving the way he did. He didn’t want to regret passing up what may be around the bend. What surprised him was that he saw a baby in every single one of his tour groups.

“You wouldn’t believe how many people take their babies on these tours! I just kept seeing you on the face of every mother. I can’t tell you how many said I would be a good father some day.”

He said he was haunted but not in a bad way. He regretted what he gave up.

“I just knew I had to see you again. I knew I had to have some sort of a plan. I had to stop living by the seat of my pants. I never knew where the next paycheck was going to come from or the next job so I started researching.”

He didn’t want to come back empty handed. He took several risky odd jobs from digging for oil to climbing trees to weather the pandemic we found ourselves in now.

You might say I was quick to forgive. You might say we never should have lived like nomads without a map or any direction. We took odd jobs as they came and put more stamps on our passports than most people would ever dare to dream of. I knew Sebastian was a free spirit when I met him. I knew if I tried to tame him, he would resent me.

It has been years since our days of quarantine during the pandemic. Sebastian and I are on our balconies facing one another.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask him one last time.

“Yes, of course I want to do this. It’s perhaps the one last thing I can do for her that any father has the honor of doing.” Sebastian looked at me and winked.

“Remember to call her Daisy, when you get to the bit about giving her away. She only lets us call her Ruby from time to time. You don’t want to confuse everyone.”

“No, I won’t get it wrong. I will look at you and you will help me stay in focus.”